[LaFond’s input is in brackets.]
With this foundation layed, a related topic would be that of free will: do we determine our actions, or are they predetermined?
[Jorjani and Mischlove have an excellent discussion of this on the YouTube series, New Thinking Aloud.]
Here, Thucydides “To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings” is applicable to the realm of thought. In the ancient world, Epicurus carried “atomism” to it's logical conclusion: if all reality can be boiled down to “matter” in it's most elemental form, the “atom” (note that what we call an atom today no longer adheres to this definition, making it's modern usage completely unrelated to the original idea) and it's movements through the void, then in the beginning, all actions were determined.
[Thucydides notes in the fuller quote that the word was a casualty of the war, that truth and honor and other higher concepts were debased, which fits well in this overall theory on materialism. Look at us today. The United Negro College fund had to change its name because a word that means nothing but black—the approved alternative term for someone from Africa—now means something else, merely because of the malice of idiot minds acting upon the language and rotting its capacity to preserve ideas.]
However, this conflicts with our intuition that we are responsible for the actions we commit, so Epicurus introduced the concept of the “swerve”, whereby “atoms” could move unpredictably, to introduce an element of randomness in the universe which would account for “free will”. Note this is almost identical to the idea in modern quantum mechanics of there being some inherent randomness built into the universe. This thinking would inspire Lucretius in his “On the nature of things” to describe a primitive version of the theory of evolution:
Book V, II 837-867 “And many monsters too earth then essayed to create, born with strange faces and strange limbs, the man-woman, between the two, yet not either, sundered from both sexes, some things bereft of feet, or in turn robbed of hands, things too found dumb without mouths, or blind without eyes, or locked through the whole body by the clinging of the limbs, so that they could not do anything or move towards any side or avoid calamity or take what they needed.....
And it must needs be that many races of living things then perished and could not beget and propagate their offspring......these fell a prey and spoil to others, all entangled in the fateful trammels of their own being, until nature brought their kind to destruction .”
[I am tempted to read this as a garbled recollection of a fall from grace into feral disgrace of some former race.]
I was informed of this by a book called “Moral Darwinism” by Benjamin Miller., who I believe was Catholic. He showed Newton, Gallileo, Roussaeu, Machiavelli, etc were all influenced by these ideas in some form or another, though I mention this only to have no claims of plagiarism levelled.
Now, immediately some issues arise with this view of the “swerve” existing for the “atom”.
[We have just entered territory far beyond my mental capacity.]
What is claimed to be an “inherent randomness” in the universe, for all one knows, could be due to forces outside the realm of repeatable and observable phenomena, meaning what modern science ascribes to “randomness” could simply be due to interactions outside the realms of what can be perceived. Already this adds an aspect of reality beyond the “material”. I say “material”, because this word as it turns out, is also as subjective. “Matter” was originally thought to be what constitutes reality, the observable and repeatable phenomena we see around us, as opposed to what we cannot see or demonstrate to exist. Already we have shown that the “I” defined in material terms ends up not existing, however, it turns out there are now different forms of “matter”, requiring a complete redefintion of the term.
There is hypothesized to exist “dark matter”, objects of reality that are supposed to exist, but which cannot be observed, which would account for certain discrepancies in gravitational phenomena. Well hold on a minute, can't be observed? Hypothesized to exist?
[I am content with a definition of materialism limited to the field of the human body, in other words the mortal, temporal world of the doomed human being distinct from his thoughts not devoted to that mortal world. I also posit that most people have no souls. If a person’s only concern is with the physical human being and its organization, toil, feeding, care and the ethics involved, than I assume—as I do of the very highly religious brains of secular humanists and atheists I have met that this person is not just an animal, but a meat-puppet, an animal-based need-desire construct in unconscious and usually denied, service to some higher will, mortal or extra-mortal. My inability to think on the level of these definitions for materialism seems to have spared me that task. In my view, there is mortality and immortality—and I regard this latter state as usually just potential and not guaranteed, simply a state beyond the physical life span, with gods subject to death and resurrection. This is primitive I know, and I assume a low percentage of eternal beings, with most of those beings ascendant beyond the mortal realm fated to become food for their betters.]
This means the term “materialism”
itself is completely meaningless, as it now really refers to what was once thought to account for all reality. The new word for “materialism” is “physicalism”. The idea history and society is determined by “material processes” now has to be updated by these same fruits to mean “physical processes”. However, when can no longer account for all reality, as “materialism” was intended to do, the entire idea becomes meaningless.
[For me, materialism has never meant anything beyond that worldview devoted to the physical process of human life on earth and its management, exclusive of greater concerns. Definitions, as with combative terms, are never anything but tools for understanding or simply operating and also an opportunity to get lost in meaningless detail. By meaningless I mean that which does not impact function of action or that above the field of mortal action. I’m a simpleton who asks “what” and not “why” unless it bears on coaching.
[My good friend just got crushed by a tree. I asked him “what” was broken and he told me. Everyone else only cared “why” he got hit by the tree. I am not God, not even a god. What concern of mine is it as to “why” he was crushed? My only concern is helping him rehab the injuries. Most persons I told about this were only concerned with “why,” obsessing over mortal justice and whether or not he did anything to cause his own harm. I, asked only, “what.” This makes me a heretic and a simpleton in Modernity. But, now I may act, while those others burn energy wondering about something done as if it could be undone and offering no help with the result.
[Definitions are excuses not to act, while we discuss them. The man who acts, asks “what.” The man who does nothing asks “why.” In combat, the man who needs to know “why” he is fighting dies. The man who needs only know “who” or “what” he is fighting kills the ethical construct who is still wondering if he “should,” while his foe strikes off his useless head.]
A more entertaining conclusion of all this is that, science is no more objective an account of reality than say poetry, or art.
[Agreed.]
Newtonian physics was once thought to account for all reality, until Quantum mechanics came along. No one would say Newtonian physics is “false”, as it does account for observable phenomena quite well. Yet it clearly isn't “true” either. Thus, science has never dealt with reality as it is in the first place, only how it is perceived. All human fields of inquiry are limited by the human mind, what it can perceive, and what it is capable of processing logically. The “atom”, time has shown, is just as much a perception of the individual mind as “beauty” or “male and female”,etc.
Perhaps there are aspects of reality that will always be beyond the individual mind, or the hive mind of the future, that can only be known through knowing oneself, revealed through a gnosis/meditation. I laugh at Lucifer and Prometheus, they know everything but themselves, they know nothing.
[I hope the mechanics of this world are never truly mastered. For then we would surely be crushed for good if the masters knew every aspect of their machine.]
My final assault on the materially minded: evolution. “Why are we alive?” “Evolution”. This may seem a convincing answer.
[Why is not a word I ever try and utter as it is utterly self-defeating, retarding and circumscribing. It is a word of hesitation like “should” cast by the masters into the herd of slaves so that the slaves might bleat “why,” “should,” and “could,” while continuing to be herded up the meat chute of souls. Sometimes “why” is useful in writing and thinking, or in predicting an enemy course of action by understanding his motives and objectives, but it is anathema to action and ascent in the main.]
However, one must ask themselves “what caused evolution”. Well, the answer modern science has come up with is a self-replicating protein some billions of years ago. Supposing this is true, then one could be persuaded into believing the purpose of life is self-replication, as this was what the first “life” was. However, why stop here? Isn't the reason some self replicating began replicating on earth some billions of years ago because some fart clouds in space condensed and formed a planet? So the purpose of life actually to carry on the spirit of this condensed fart cloud in sp,,,,etc. One could keep going through this chain of events right to the point of singularity, the big bang, and say “Everything is due to the big bang”, which is technically true. In this sense, astrology is just as “true” as astronomy. The reason my balls are itchy is indeed the same reason WW2 happened, and the same reason Venus is in the position it is right now, namely, the big bang. If one could understand this event, and it's consequences, they could correlate why my balls itched at the same time Venus was at it's current position, and how this relates to the bad man's square mustache.If there were some mind of God/ Logos in the beginning which was capable of seeing the consequences of these events, then the argument God was not involved in creation is no longer valid. Granted, what God is seems beyond any thought or observation.
[We all seem incapable of conceiving of God as an extra-human eternity, but must always describe him as a soap opera producer and usually as having gender, even though God is eternal. I decline to categorize the Eternal beyond my experience, which is zero. I do think that sub-eternal entities afflict, affright, stalk, haunt, hunt and torment us for their ends or others. But these notions are based primarily on reading history and theology and only secondarily on my own life, which is a field utterly without any manifestation of supernatural benevolence.]
The last arguments against this would be “there is some inherent randomness” in the universe which would even escape Logos, which has been already demonstrated to not be true outside human observation. The “inherent randomness” does not seem to exist outside equations and perceptions.
However, the last retreat of the atheist earth mommy mind, is to retreat to “it's turtles all the way down”.
[May Mars return and rape her.]
Why must there be a beginning? Who created God? What if there is no “beginning”, and reality is an infinite unlinked chain of events? It's turtles all the way down, but they're not stacked atop one another, they're scattered all over.
There must be a beginning, as our universe exists in motion and within Time, meaning it is finite, and as finite things are not eternal, they must have begun. So, whatever created the universe, was the unmoved mover of creation. Supposing however, this “unmoved mover” was itself moved, this would simply change what the unmoved mover is, as it being moved implies it is no longer eternal and exists within time, which requires a beginning. The final, most pathetic of all attempts of the ascetic virgin to escape this is that this infinite chain of events is actually not linked at all, and all that exists is only present, any causality is mere illusion.
[As Virgil notes, Jupiter existed before gods and men and will exist afterwards. He is Eternal and beyond the field of Time. I do think that He is preferable as a reference to a power beyond Time, to It, and definitely to She, as we are speaking of an action, a positive initiation, and that is a masculine concept in our field of human experience.]
To be a materialist, one must end up believing they do not exist, “physical” reality is all that exists, but that even if something else does exist, it's unrelated to “physical existence”, because all that exists is the illusion of existence.
Fuck you Buddha.
From a diverse and tolerant North America,
- Devil Dick
